Customers currently can’t withdraw funds from Epik’s payments system. Epik has taken its payments platform Masterbucks, which acts like a form of store credit, offline for maintenance. The company says it should be back online on October 10, and withdrawals won’t be available until then. Brian Royce, the new CEO …

A sports drink company, an energy trading business, and a concrete and stone company bought domain names. One of the frustrating things about GDPR and the move to Whois privacy is that it makes it difficult to figure out who bought domain names. For example, Editing.com sold for $46,000 at …

Panelist find reverse domain name hijacking in case involving third-party claims adjuster. It’s not every day that a large company is found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking. But a National Arbitration Forum panelist has ruled that insurance company United Services Automobile Association (USAA) has tried to reverse …

Domain transactions are up, although results are flattening so far this year. Domain transactions at Escrow.com have grown 85% in the last 12 months to June 2022 compared to the same period 2 years ago. Image courtesy Escrow.com. Escrow.com parent Freelancer.com (ASX: FLN) reported earnings today for the first half …

How data can help you become a better domain investor. On today’s show, I talk with Squadhelp founder Darpan Munjal. You’ll learn: What signals predict someone might by a domain name (and which ones do no predict it) How adding language to your landers about sale prices and impending price …

Fight escalates between Unstoppable Domains and Handshake. Blockchain domain name company Unstoppable Domains and the owner of .wallet in the rival Handshake system have sued each other. The lawsuits come on the heels of Unstoppable Domains’ lawsuit against Gateway Registry and its owner. Unstoppable sued those parties after Gateway started …

No one played dirty, but the expiration process can appear that way. Ethereum Name Service and Virgil Griffith, the registrant of eth.link, recently filed a lawsuit against GoDaddy, Dynadot, and a company that “bought” eth.link in a domain auction at Dynadot. A judge issued a temporary restraining order that handed …

Person who registered the domain in 1996 says it’s stolen. A California resident has filed a lawsuit (pdf) alleging that the valuable domain name zow.com is stolen. Yesterday, Marci Seely filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, where .com registry Verisign is located. It’s …

10 Democrats ask NTIA to add Whois privacy to .us domain names. While Whois records in most top level domains are now private, .us remains an outlier: the U.S. government specifically forbids Whois privacy on .us domain registrations. It has enforced a no-privacy policy since 2005, much to the chagrin …

Which domains get used the most? Which new TLDs make the cool kid’s club, and which don’t? Last week I wrote about DataProvider.com’s analysis of new top level domains and which ones are popular. As I mentioned in that post, there are lots of ways to measure new TLD popularity …

If you think something is fishy about the dates cited in the decision, you’re right. I was reading through a UDRP decision (pdf) for snugg.com today when something caught my eye. The first two paragraphs of the “factual background” summary that the panelist puts together state: According to the Complaint, …

A mastermind facilitator, an NFT business, and Cisco bought domain names. Sedo reported some nice four and five-figure domain name sales for the past week. Here’s a list of end user domain name sales that just completed at Sedo for which I could determine a buyer. You can view previous …

Patent covers using your voice to register domains, do Whois lookups, etc. “Alexa, please register My Crazy New Idea dot com.” The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 11,451,511 (pdf) to Verisign for “Audio-based systems, devices, and methods for domain services.” Yep, we’re talking about using devices …

Here’s how commissions work on payment plans and how Dan.com’s commissions are higher than Afternic’s. Yesterday, Dan.com emailed its users to let them know about a new brokerage feature. Now that Dan.com is part of GoDaddy, Dan.com users can send their inquiries to GoDaddy’s brokerage team to handle. This is …

These are the fastest growing and biggest domain name registrars for .com domains. ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers May 2022. Every once in a while we get a strange registrar popping up in the top 10 …

Domain investors suggest how to scale your domain portfolio. Most domain investors start out small and try to scale their domain portfolio over time. But what’s the best way to approach scaling? How much money do you need to start? Where should you acquire domains and for how much? How …